Thursday, June 10, 2010

Summer, Summer, Summertime!

If you don't get the title reference, then you didn't grow up watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. DJ Jazzy Jeff anyone?

Did you miss us? Just when you thought you would have to go all summer without the rantings, ravings and whimsical musings of the WRC staff, we are rescuing you from the intellectual desert of summer with SUMMER BLOGS!

One of the great things about summer is that things slow down just enough for me to be able to flip through the headlines on Alternet.org and actually read some of the articles. As such, I have oh-so-much to talk about.

I found this article on the new Sex and the City movie. It really got me thinking about the charges of moral depravity thrown at women who spend too much or spend incorrectly (read: on themselves) and how these same charges never get hurled at men. Would James Bond, for example, be called trivial and shallow for his obsession with fancy cars in the same way that Carrie Bradshaw is for her obsession with shoes?

And would this tsk-tsk mentality cease if Carrie was spending all her extra cash on her man or a baby? It is possible that one of the ladies does spend her money that way. (For purposes of full disclosure here, I must admit that I have never watched the show nor have I seen either of the movies. That aside, I still think this article makes a good point.) In fact, I have my own issues with the whole thing (all white cast, living an unrealistic lifestyle in NYC - I could go on and on), but why focus on women's materialism only when there are just as many examples of men living similar lifestyles on screen. So you can count me on the side of the SATC women on this one (for once). I say "live it up, ladies" - if it's good enough for the men, it's good enough for you.